


(let me be the first to say) welcome home

by nostradamusO



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Christmas, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Get Together, Jake and Gina are siblings fight me, Jamy, Peraltiago, Soft Jake, and some hot chocolate, canon-ish until jake comes home from being undercover, in which Amy broke up with teddy while jake was undercover, mentions of Hanukkah, minor appearances from the squad, post-Season 1, s1 au, slightly altered childhood for jake and gina, soft fluff, there's a lot of narrative in this, tiny bit of sad with a Happy Ending, yeah i know jake is jewish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22045171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostradamusO/pseuds/nostradamusO
Summary: In December, Jake wonders how his friends are spending their holidays while he’s a city away, in a crappy apartment, knee-deep in the mafia. Now it’s February, and he sits in his real apartment on his own couch with Amy, and they drink hot chocolate and she tells him about her Christmas and wow, he loves her. Peraltiago and Jake/Gina sibling dynamic.
Relationships: Gina Linetti & Amy Santiago, Gina Linetti & Jake Peralta, Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	(let me be the first to say) welcome home

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is late, Christmas was six days ago. Fight me. And yes, I wrote this in three hours and did very little editing, so I apologize in advance. I hope you like it anyway!

By the time he’s thirty-two, it’s been enough years of hollow Decembers that Jake is starting to forget how Christmas feels. 

How it felt when he was nine and the sky was still dark and the city asleep, but Gina was shaking his sleeping bag in the dimly lit blanket fort in Nana’s living room until he woke up. He can’t really remember the smell of her coffee cake warm out of the oven, or the chatter of Gina as she swallowed her slice whole and passed out the presents under the tree.

She’d tell them about everything she’d asked Santa for, and it was always silly things, because what she wanted was something even magic couldn’t give her. So Jake asked because she wouldn’t.

_Dear Santa,_ he would write. _Please bring my sister’s mom and dad home for Christmas. They’re never here and she misses them a lot._

They never came, and she stopped caring (no she didn’t), but Jake never stopped asking. Even when Santa wasn’t real anymore, he asked. He didn’t send letters, but he still asked.

(It never worked.)

Then they grew up, and Nana died and Jake was already two years post-academy and Gina was in college. So one Christmas went by with no time and no money to spend on flying home to see his sister, and then two and three and four, and then they both lived in the city again but without Nana they didn’t remember how to celebrate.

The years keep passing. He sends a card and an old photograph every Christmas, through the mail so he doesn’t have to look her in the eye and remember that he’s starting to forget their holidays with the woman who cared for them when her parents wouldn’t and his dad was gone and his mother was too busy working three jobs to be a mom as well.

He tries to remember how Christmas felt when he was young and had bright eyes and a blanket fort and coffee cake with blueberries and warm lights on the tree. He tries to remember for Gina, he really does. He makes copies of all the pictures he has left of their Christmases with Nana and delivers them in person early in the morning, before the sun rises and the blanket fort would’ve been taken down. He knows she’ll be awake, but he doesn’t knock or use his key; he leaves the envelope on the doorstep and walks home while the sky is still dark.

The holiday passes and he spends it alone in the quiet of his apartment. She texts him _thank you_ when the day is almost over. No emojis. He knows she’s sad like he is. They don’t talk about it anymore, but he knows her parents visit even less now than they did when she was young.

The next Christmas he spends in an apartment in a city he doesn’t know and doesn’t like, with no word from his sister and no way to tell her _Merry Christmas, I miss you._

He’s been undercover for a while and he’s longing for Brooklyn, and the people he left behind. He wonders if they miss him too.

He hopes Gina won’t spend it alone, but he knows she probably will.

He wonders who Charles will celebrate with, and realizes that he hasn’t ever _really_ asked where his best friend goes on the holidays. He swears he’ll be a better friend when he gets home, if he gets home. (The Iannucci's are dangerous, and he’s always been reckless with himself.) 

He imagines Terry will spend Christmas with Sharon and their daughters who have Santa and a family that will always be there, even when they’ve grown and changed and left the nest.

(He’s happy they have people as wonderful as Terry and Sharon to love them, but if he’s being honest and maybe a little sad and a little drunk, he’ll admit that he’s jealous.

His mother worked _really_ hard to make sure there was enough money to keep him happy and healthy and he’s grateful, he truly is, but he would’ve been okay to starve a little if it meant she worked two jobs instead of three and he got to spend time with her. 

He lives far away now and she calls sometimes and he answers, but they never know what to say. They don’t really know each other. They never did.

It’s not her fault. 

He doesn’t resent her. 

Not much.)

Rosa might visit her parents. He doesn’t really know. She probably wouldn’t answer if he asked. Not that he can.

Holt, Jake assumes, will spend the day with Kevin and Cheddar. 

Hitchcock and Scully will probably eat themselves into comas. (He secretly hopes that at least one of Scully’s kids will call him to say _Merry Christmas, dad_.)

He mostly wonders about Amy. He hopes she’s not still dating that human ricecake, but knows she probably is. That’s okay though, because she deserves someone responsible and organized like Teddy. Jake knows that he isn’t good enough for her at all, and that Teddy might be close enough. 

(Only _close_ , though, because nobody will ever be _completely_. Amy is a comet, a shooting star, a once-in-a-lifetime one-in-a-million creation; a bright smile and a brilliant mind and a shiny ponytail disappearing around a corner, flying through the sky.)

He wishes anyway. He wishes he could be wherever she is, and that he could see her smile and _maybe_ be the reason she does. Mostly, he wishes she’s happy. For the first time since before he lost Christmas, Jake writes a letter to Santa and drops it in the special mailbox at the post office that delivers to the North Pole, just to make sure.

_Dear Santa_ , he writes. He stares at these words on the paper for a long time before he writes anything else. 

_It’s been a while. My fault, not yours. I have the usual request—for Gina’s parents to come home. I know you couldn’t make it happen before, but just try again, please? I know she still misses them and they haven’t visited in a really long time._

_I’ve got something else, and I think it’s a little more possible than the first thing. There’s someone super important, Amy Santiago. Can you make sure she’s_ really _happy? I can’t imagine she isn’t, but just make sure, okay? It’ll be at least a few months before I see her again, if I ever do. Please, just make sure._

Christmas comes and goes, and he doesn’t know if Gina’s parents came home (they probably didn’t) or if Amy was really happy (she probably was), because Santa still isn’t real.

Another month passes, and then two, and then he gets to go home. 

(One bad guy gets away. Jake’s stomach turns at the thought, but the FBI tells him there’s nothing he can do, and he wants to go home anyway, he yearns for Brooklyn, for _home_. For his city that smells like cigarettes and piss and car exhaust, but houses the only people in the world that he knows, loves.)

His eyes are barely open when he stumbles off the plane, but he wakes up when he sees that _they’re all here to greet him_. His heart crumbles inside his ribs and he realizes for the first time how _alone_ he’s felt for six months.

He barely sees them; a glimpse of Charles, already crying, Holt, the statue, Rosa, with an expression he figures probably means something like— _airport security took all my knives and I’m ready to take them back and slash their tires/throats_ —and Terry and even Hitchcock and Scully, and Amy, whose face he can’t read and doesn’t get the chance to try because—

_Gina_. She crashes into him like a battering ram. Gina, who never lets people see that she cares, pulls him into a hug so tight it reminds him of when they were little and he hugged her when she wished her mom and dad would come home on her birthday and they didn’t, and she cried until she fell asleep, and pretended to be all better when she woke up.

She doesn’t cry now, but she whispers to his ear before she pulls away; “I missed you.”

_I missed you too_ , he wants to say, but she’s gone before he can.

Charles starts to cry ugly tears when Jake grins at him and says _hi_ , and he hugs Jake like he thought he’d never see him again. Jake tries not to dwell on the fact that he could’ve been right, and instead asks—because he never really did before so he has to now—

“How was your Christmas, Charles?”

The man looks confused but he smiles wetly through it, and Jake thinks he’s about to get a half hour monologue about his best friend’s holiday, but he doesn’t.

“I’ll tell you later,” Charles says instead, before he glances at Amy, not-subtly, and Jake understands. 

Charles thinks that Amy will be happy to see him. Jake isn’t sure she will. (He wonders if she was pressured to come here, tonight. God, he hopes not.)

He vividly remembers walking away from her in a dark parking lot with an unwanted bombshell as a lousy goodbye; she’s probably not happy with him, even after six months. 

(It’s not like he’s been around for her to direct her anger at.)

He thinks he can’t find a way to live with that because she’s definitely better off without him in her life. Going undercover in the mafia has changed him, but he’s still the immature idiot she’s always annoyed with.

Except she’s got shiny eyes when he actually looks at her and _fuck_ , he really wishes he could be good enough for her. 

She approaches really slow and she isn’t smiling; he’s not sure how she feels, he really can’t tell, but then she folds him into the softest hug he’s ever been given and he thinks maybe she missed him, even if only a little.

She hugs him with her arms tucked under his jacket and her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt. She hugs him like she isn’t sure he wants her to, and he hugs her back like he’s been in a nightmare for six months, and it’s a dream now, but she won’t be there when he wakes up.

“I missed you,” She murmurs into his shoulder, and she doesn’t pull away quickly like he expected she would; he didn’t think she would hug him at all, let alone hold on. He hadn’t even really thought—he’d hoped, though—that she’d even be here when he got home. 

Jake wants to say _I missed you too_ , but he’s so surprised because she really sounds like she means it, and so all that comes out is a choked: “Really?”

He feels her smile and her quiet, airy laugh more than he hears it, and he pulls her a little closer as she tells him: “Of course I missed you, idiot.”

“I missed you too,” He tells her, before he can tell himself not to. “A stupid amount.”

She lingers for one more long second before pulling away, but she doesn’t go far. She stays with him, her left shoulder almost touching his right. He thinks he’s probably hallucinating, but he swears he can still feel the warmth of her skin even once she’s gone.

Charles, who’s practically shaking, suggests Shaw’s to celebrate Jake’s return and the success of his undercover operation, and Jake has missed these people _so much_ but he’s also _really tired_ and hasn’t deeply slept in six months, so he asks for a raincheck with a quick apology.

He gets an easy grin from Gina before she climbs into an Uber and is gone, and Charles almost has to be physically forced into a cab by the Sarge, who climbs in after him because they live only a few blocks apart. Jake never saw Rosa leave (and the hello he’d gotten from her was more of a _welcome back_ nod than anything else), but by the time Captain Holt offers Jake a rare smile and drives away, she is gone.

Hitchcock and Scully saw a sign pointing in the direction of a Starbucks almost immediately after arriving and haven’t been seen since.

Jake turns to Amy. She hasn’t moved from his side and looks anxious, her smile tight and her eyes jumping between his and scanning the room like suddenly baggage claim is the most interesting thing she’s ever seen.

He isn’t ready to watch her drive away. He’s still processing the fact that she’s _here_ , and she _missed him_ , and he missed her _so_ _much_.

“Wanna share a cab?” He asks, hoping his voice doesn’t crack and he doesn’t sound desperate. Being alone right now, even in his own apartment (probably covered in a thick layer of dust, with six month-expired food in the fridge and dirty dishes in the sink, the food cemented on), sounds like hell. 

He’s been completely alone and longing for anything, anyone familiar for so long that the ache behind his sternum has become a part of him. (Amy makes it go away.)

He worries she’ll say no, he _expects_ she’ll say no, but her eyes brighten and she offers him a warm smile and nods quick like his offer will disappear if she doesn’t grab it fast enough.

They’re both quiet when they climb into the backseat of the first cab they see, and she hesitates when she gets in, hovering without sitting. He wonders if something is wrong, but then she settles into the middle seat and her knee bumps his leg and her shoulder brushes his and stays there, and no, nothing is wrong. For the first time in half a year, everything is good.

She’s usually cold, she always complains about it, but now she’s warm against his side and he lets himself lean—just a bit—closer. 

She looks so soft right now, her face a little red from the February chill and her eyes reminding him that he’s safe now, he’s home again.

For a long while, he doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t either.

“How was your Christmas?” He asks, quiet and curious. She tilts her head at him like she’s wondering something, but she tells him without a preamble of _why do you ask?_

“Strange, but good. Teddy asked me to go with him to Vermont, to meet his parents,” She says, and Jake was expecting that, but hearing it out loud still smacks him in the face. “So I broke up with him and spent it with Gina. She cleaned your apartment, by the way; when she found out you were coming home. She emptied your fridge months ago, but this morning she vacuumed and dusted and stuff. I offered to help, but she reminded me that I took a lot of sick days in September and probably shouldn’t waste any more.” 

(Jake tries not to think about how September is when he left.)

“Oh,” He says, because he can’t come up with anything better. What does a person say to that?

( _Thank you for spending Christmas with my sister because she’s spent it alone for twelve years and she pretends it’s fine but she hates being alone; she’s not good at being alone._ No, shouldn’t say that.

_Why did you break up with Teddy? I thought you were perfect?_ Not that either. That’s the wrong takeaway from what she said. 

_I’m glad you had a good Christmas, I love you and I want you to be happy,_ no, definitely not. Started out well but you ruined it, Jake.)

“She showed me the pictures you gave her last year,” Amy says softly, like she’s sharing a secret. He looks at her in the red glow of a street light, and when it turns green he looks down at his hands. “She told me about your Christmases as kids, with your Nana. They sounded wonderful.”

“They were,” He says, his voice thick; he feels like he’s choking. He wonders if he looks like he’s about to cry (he slightly is) or if she just knows him really well (she really does), because she reaches her left hand to grab his right, and slides her fingers into the spaces between his.

The heavy feeling in his throat and on his chest lifts up a little. She’s quiet, they’re both quiet, for a few minutes before she speaks again.

“Christmas was bad this year, for you.” She says it like it’s a fact, not a question, and he nods because she’s right. He isn’t sure what to say, and she doesn’t look like she knows either.

The cab stops sharply and his elbow smacks into the car door as he tilts sideways. The driver says something he doesn’t process, and Amy is pulling cash from her pocket and counting it out before he can even put the numbers the man had said together in his head. She pushes him out the door before he can offer to pay, or at least split it. (Then he remembers that he doesn’t have any money with him. He doesn’t have _anything_ with him.)

She climbs out of the cab with him and his eyebrows jump along with his stupid heart, which he mentally tells to _shut up_ because it’s beating _so_ loud and he doesn’t want her to hear it. 

The cab driver pulls away and fades into the stream of others creeping down the street. 

He means to just glance at her, one quick glimpse, but when he does, she’s already staring at him. He wishes he knew what she was thinking. (It’s been six months. He wonders if she’s changed enough that he won’t be able to read her anymore.

She can still read him.)

“You asked Charles about his Christmas, as well.”

She’s going to ask why. He can tell. 

If she asks, he’ll tell her. He’s not sure if that’s good or bad.

“Yeah.” He lets her meet his eyes. 

“Why?” She asks, practically in a whisper. He can barely hear her over the bustling city. “You don’t have to tell me.”

( _Will you go on the Worst Date Ever with me? You have to say yes._ )

He glances at his apartment building, and back at her. It’s cold outside and this feels weird to talk about on the sidewalk, with strangers walking by and cars honking and someone smoking five feet away leaned against a garbage can. 

He doesn’t even get the chance to ask—Amy seems to understand.

“You still have some of that dark hot chocolate, right?” She asks him, her head tilting to the side. Her hands are deep in her pockets and her jacket is thin. (He realizes she’s probably cold.) 

“Yeah, unless Gina stole it.” ( _while I was gone_ , he doesn’t continue.)

Amy half-laughs. It’s more a soft breathy sound with a smile to go with it, and it puts a smile from him as well. He takes a step backward before turning around toward the building. They walk the two flights of stairs together in silence, and he stares at his locked door for a moment when they reach it, wondering how to open it before remembering the key Gina had pressed into his hand at the airport, knowing he didn’t have one of his own apartment keys anymore.

The click is loud in the silence, and so is the handle turning open, and turning closed when they’re inside. He puts the key back in his pocket instead of dropping it on the table by the door.

She’s already in his kitchen by the time he hangs his coat on a hook and takes off his sneakers. She knows the cupboards for the mugs and the hot chocolate packets and the drawer for the spoons. She’s known those things for years, but it still puts a strange feeling in his chest because he’d forgotten she did, and he’s not sure _he_ remembers where everything in his kitchen is housed.

She puts both mugs in the microwave at the same time while he just kind of watches, unable to move, to breathe. Then she tosses a packet at him, and he fumbles to catch it. 

They stand at the counter together and she hands him the bag of rainbow mini-marshmallows after taking a few for herself. He puts a handful in his, pressing them down so the chocolate soaks in. Both their spoons go into the sink and the paper packages into the empty recycling bin under the sink next to the empty garbage with a fresh bag. 

Amy pulls her legs up when she sits down on his couch. Her eyes follow him when he heads over to join her. She shifts around until she’s facing him, and he turns to do the same while she crosses her legs. 

The mug is hot in his hands. It’s covered in small pineapples (because Amy is _mean_ and he never should’ve told her about that) and hers says _DIE HARD_ in huge capital letters, with a picture of Nakatomi Plaza in the background. Charles bought him that one.

Amy doesn’t say anything; she’s waiting for him to decide what he wants to say; if he wants to say anything at all. It takes him a few minutes and half his hot chocolate to come up with any words, but she waits. Patiently, quietly, just softly existing on the couch across from him, her knees less than twelve inches from his.

“I wrote a letter,” Jake says finally. Suddenly, he feels just as silly as he did when he was sending it. “That sounds really stupid. But I wrote a letter to, Santa, at Christmas.”

He’s quiet for a minute, looking for more words. Amy doesn’t say anything, doesn’t interrupt, because she knows he’s not done. It’s a small action, not much of anything, but it’s important.

“I did that when I was a kid. Uh, every year. Gina’s parents were never around, and I’d ask for them to. . .visit, I guess. They never did, they never came to see her for the holidays, but she was too afraid to ask so I did it for her.

“Gina was the reason I celebrated Christmas. My Nana and my mom and me celebrated Hanukkah, but Gina did Christmas, so we started doing both the first year she spent with us so that she wouldn’t feel so alone because her parents were in Europe and she hadn’t seen them since October.”

Amy takes his empty mug and sets it with hers on the coffee table. She turns her body to face forward and nudges him to do the same. He doesn’t know why until she leans her side against him and reaches for his hand rested on his thigh. He latches onto the touch and wraps her hand up in both of his, and looks down at her fingers curled around the side of his palm. Her nails are painted a soft, pale, shiny color. He wonders if Gina did that, because Amy doesn’t usually wear polish.

He wonders if she’s keeping him close because she needs to not be alone right now just as much as he does. Either way, her hands are warm.

“Does she know you did that? Ask for her parents to come home?” Amy asks.

Jake stares down at their hands and traces patterns on her skin—brushes his thumb in figure-eights over her pulse, spirals swirling inwards on her palm, runs his pointer finger across the back of her hand from her wrist to her tips of her fingers, writing letters and words across her skin: _Amy Amy Amy. Ames. Miss you. Thank you. I love you._

He doesn’t think she notices. He hopes she doesn’t notice. 

“I don’t think so.”

“Is that what you asked for this year?” She turns her head to look at him, like she’s really listening and she cares about what he’ll say. It’s been a long time since he’s been so vulnerable and still safe, and he thinks he’d tell her anything she wants right now, in his quiet, lamp-lit, unfamiliar apartment just before midnight.

“Yes. Some other stuff, but that was at the top. I worried about her. Thanks for spending the day with her, and, you know. Stuff.” He tries to swallow his heart back down from his throat into his chest. Amy is quiet when she tells him: “You don’t have to thank me, Jake. I was there because I wanted to be. It was a good Christmas.”

When he doesn’t say anything, she goes on. “You don’t have to tell me what else you put on your list, but if you want to, now or ever, you can. I’ll listen.”

Her hand tightens around his and her shoulder presses a little closer. He breathes, long and deep, and peaceful. 

(There are one-hundred-and-eighty-two days in six months. Jake hasn’t breathed in one-hundred-and-eighty-two days.)

“I just asked—I wanted—I—” His voice cracks. Amy’s free hand crosses her body to run up and down his arm, to scratch her nails against the fabric of his sweatshirt as he closes his eyes. 

“It’s alright, take your time,” She says, and the lilt of her voice says the same thing. Softly, _it’s alright_. 

“I asked if he could just, you know, check on you? Make sure you were having a really good Christmas. That you were happy. Or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Sorry.”

Her breath catches in her throat so sharp he can hear it. She whispers; “Jake.”

He keeps his eyes on his lap, on their hands, painting loops and spirals and dancing lines down the back of her hand to her wrist then back up to the ends of her fingers with his thumb, and she whispers again, a little more urgently, _“Jake.”_

He looks up this time. He finds her eyes, and they’re shiny but so gentle and soft and warm and Jake feels peaceful even though his heart is racing so fast it’s flying.

Her body twists toward him and she reaches out, brushing her fingertips down his cheek, settling on his jaw, barely there. She tilts his head down until his forehead bumps hers, and she pulls him a little closer, a little closer, and presses her lips to his, so lightly it’s like being kissed by a feather.

( _“So, a lot of change around here, huh?”_ )


End file.
